"We're scared of taking our fashion abroad, that it will be unpleasant, but we're a huge country with a long history of beauty," Zaitsev told Reuters after the show, which also showed headscarved women and men with trousers tucked into boots, conjuring up the look of Cossacks, or tsarist cavalrymen.

Ballerinas, an idyllic Russian winter setting and an ode to French queen Marie-Antoinette also featured at the week.

"We were isolated from the world (during Soviet times)," said Tatyana Mikhalkova, the wife of Oscar-winning film director Nikita Mikhalkov and president of Russian Silhouette, a charity she set up to give funding to young Russian designers.